After Easter
by Azdak
Summary: Schellenberg is dying. Stirlitz goes to visit him.


In 1952, when Walter Schellenberg lay dying in Turin, it wasn't hard to wangle permission to visit him. A few hints dropped in the right ears - Nazi gold - deathbed confessions - and he had his orders. All nonsense, of course. If Schellenberg had had any idea where Bormann's missing millions were stashed, he wouldn't have spent his final months traipsing fruitlessly about Europe in search of them. But it was a serviceable excuse. The Americans could always be persuaded to follow the whiff of money.

He could not have said why he wanted to see Schellenberg. That particular period of his life had ended almost seven years ago. Since then, he had acquired a new legend, a new language and a new name. But for this trip he put on his old identity one last time and was surprised to discover how well it still fitted. "Standartenführer Stirlitz," he murmured into the mirror, the language rising unbidden to his tongue. He still spoke German from time to time, but not those particular words. There was an entire dictionary of words he never used now, a language vanished along with the people who had spoken it. Himmler was dead, Kaltenbrunner was dead, Müller and Bormann had sunk without trace, and now Schellenberg, possibly the most dangerous and certainly the most brilliant of all his opponents, was about to depart as well. Perhaps Stirlitz felt the need to say goodbye. Or perhaps he simply wanted to make sure his old adversary was safely dead.

Schellenberg had got off lightly at Nuremberg. Kaltenbrunner went to the gallows for crimes against humanity - a journey hastened by the boot Schellenberg's evidence planted in his backside - but Schellenberg himself (so personable, so helpful, such a sensible, rational witness) was merely sentenced to six years in prison. He had served only two years of it, when he was released on grounds of ill health.

That part, at least, was true. It was evident as soon as Stirlitz entered the hospital room that Schellenberg, that masterful spinner of legends and alibis, was not spinning this. An old man looked up from the bed, with yellow eyes and a face full of baleful intelligence, as if the approach of death had rendered Schellenberg's mask transparent. He had become what, beneath the deceitfully boyish face, he had always truly been. It made Stirlitz wonder what his own death mask would divulge.

He must still have been some years away from that moment, because Schellenberg recognised him at once. The wasted face lit up.

"Stirlitz, by God! I never thought I'd see_ you_ again. I heard the Soviets buried you in a silence camp."

"Buchenwald," said Stirlitz. He had, in fact, spent time there, at least on paper; the Centre had been keen to establish his anti-Soviet credentials. "But it turns out the Americans will go to some lengths to get their hands on German expertise."

"I see," said Schellenberg. There was a note of bitterness in his voice. "I can't say I blame you. If the Americans had offered me thirty pieces of silver, I'd have jumped at it. Anything to get out of prison. I underestimated the effectiveness of tedium as an instrument of torture."

He coughed painfully, halfway between a rattle and a gurgle. His heart was giving out, his lungs slowly filling with fluid.

"What do they want you to ask me about? Bormann's bank accounts? I haven't got a clue. I talked to Skorzeny. He knows nothing. The old fox got away with it in the end. Much good it did him. Much good it did any of us." He paused and then asked, with a sly wistfulness, "Did you ever see Müller? In the Eastern Zone?"

Stirlitz shook his head. "Müller's vanished off the face of the earth. Whether he's under it or knocking back vodka in a South American jungle, I couldn't say."

"Let's hope it's the latter. For my sake, not his. The less of the afterlife I have to spend in his company, the better. You're looking well, Stirlitz. I see your new masters treat you kindly. Or have so far," he added, with a glint of malice. "What will they do to you when you come back with empty pockets?"

Stirlitz smiled. "I'll think of something."

"I'm sure you will. You always do. We had some good times, didn't we? In spite of everything. They should have taken us on together, the Americans. Think what you and I could have achieved! We wouldn't have bungled it, not like this bunch of amateurs. But no, I was locked away, with nothing but the inside of my own head to occupy me, while the Soviets took half of Germany. They only let me out to die."

He coughed again. It sounded worse this time.

"More fool the Americans," said Stirlitz. "If they'd had the sense to co-opt you, there wouldn't be a GDR."

"At least they had you. I daresay the Reds would have taken a lot more otherwise."

It sounded like a compliment, and the Schellenberg Stirlitz had known would have delivered it with that characteristic smile, half charm offensive, half threat, pushing up close to see if you would back away. You could never tell if he was going to kiss you or kill you. But this new Schellenberg, this new old Schellenberg, made no pretence at smiling. His eyes, stained yellow by liver failure, rested thoughtfully on Stirlitz's face, animated by the same malevolent intelligence that never missed a detail or an opportunity.

"I'm glad you came, Stirlitz. And just in time, too. Another couple of days and it would have been too late. Not just for you. For me. There's something I want to talk to you about. You could call it a confession, of a sort."

"I'm not a priest," said Stirlitz. "Of any sort."

"I know. You can't give me absolution, either. If there's anything waiting on the other side of the door - another Nuremberg, on a bigger scale - then you'll face it, too, one day. I hope you've got your defence prepared."

Stirlitz shook his head. "I've never been a religious man. It's not the judgment of God I care about."

"But the judgment of history? I know how history will judge me. A non-entity. A failure. We should have made peace while we still had the chance. But Himmler was too damned cowardly to act until it was too late. And there's no satisfaction in saying I told you so to a dead man. The truth is, I had my chance and I botched it. History ran over me like a tank."

"I wouldn't say botched," said Stirlitz.

"Wouldn't you?" Schellenberg gave him a dry smile. "And why is that? It's what I'd write on my report. 'A worthwhile idea but shoddily executed'."

"Don't you think you're being overly hard on yourself? The operation was beautifully set up. The alibi with that pastor was a masterpiece. It still seems like a miracle that we all came out of it unscathed. Who else could have pulled that off? And you came so close to success."

"I did," said Schellenberg. He wasn't smiling now. "So close. If Wolff hadn't been recalled... if Bormann hadn't found out… I've asked myself for years, you know, who it was who sent that message to Bormann from Bern. The embassy had no records. It's as if a ghost slipped in and sent it. But I don't believe in ghosts. I've gone over it inside my head a thousand times. It's not as if I had anything else to think about. Someone outplayed me, Stirlitz. Someone's fingers were all over that operation, but I can't figure out whose."

"Does it matter?" said Stirlitz. "Uncertainty is built into the system. Any physicist will tell you that."

"Very philosophical," said Schellenberg. "But philosophy's no good to me. I'm dying. I'm 42 and what's left of my time on earth can be measured out in hours. Days, perhaps, if I'm unlucky. Death doesn't frighten me, but I admit to a degree of trepidation about the actual dying. It's been vile so far. The world shrinks to the size of a coffin. Every day, I lose another piece of myself. And what I find, now that my life has been stripped down to the barest essentials, is that it fucking terrifies me to think I'll never know who outplayed me in the end. Can you understand that?"

Stirlitz nodded. It was less risky than speaking. He had a suspicion he knew where this was going.

"I thought you might," said Schellenberg. "You always gave me the feeling you understood more than you let on. It was a little unnerving, frankly. I never quite knew what was going on inside your head. Most people are as transparent as a window pane. They want money, or they want sex, or power. Or they just want to stay alive a little bit longer. It's easy to find their levers. But I was never sure what drove you. Beyond the challenge of the game itself, of course. The desire to prove that you were brighter than everyone around you."

"Funnily enough," said Stirlitz, "that's what everyone always thought about you. Even Himmler could see that your ideological convictions lacked a certain fire, even if you did put on your uniform before visiting him."

"Except I wasn't brighter than everyone, was I? You can't think how that gnaws away at me. Not to know. There aren't that many candidates, after all." His eyes bored into Stirlitz, who tried not to shift uneasily. "Not Kaltenbrunner, he couldn't have plotted his way out of a paper bag. Not Nebe. Certainly not Papen. That leaves Müller. Heydrich, if he'd been alive. And you."

"I'm flattered."

"No you aren't. You know it's the truth. I'm tired of games. I never thought I would be, but I am. I'm fed up of guessing at motives, at feelings. When I was alive, I lived among masks. I worked with constructs, people I'd built up out of fragments of information. Just for once, I want to know who it was I was dealing with. Does that make any sense at all?"

"I think so," said Stirlitz. "You want to see his face. This ghost."

"Exactly! You do understand."

"But in this game of ours," said Stirlitz, slowly, "every man has many faces. Even if you were to catch a glimpse of him, even if you thought you recognised him, how would you know it was the true one?"

"Perhaps I wouldn't," said Schellenberg. "But recognising the mask would be enough." He laughed painfully, the breath hissing through his lungs like wind in a chimney. "If ignorance is the human condition, inauthenticity is the spy's condition. In the end, we've worn the masks so long, we forget who we really are. You said that once. We've forgotten ourselves, like coats hung in the closet after a bout of hard drinking at Easter. You should have been a poet, Stirlitz. Then you needn't have been a spy."

"In that case, the world would have lost a good spy and gained a bad poet. I'm not sure the trade would have been worth it."

"And you are good, aren't you?" said Schellenberg. "You evaded Nuremberg. You charmed the Americans. You didn't spend years locked away in a tiny cell. You even came out of that unholy mess with Wolff unscratched. It was an odd coincidence, wasn't it, you being in Switzerland at the time? And knowing about the talks, too. Almost as much of a coincidence as your fingerprints being on the suitcase of that Russian transmitter. The suitcase that you just happened to pick up, out of all the suitcases in Berlin. And it was your idea to go back to Bern, too. You said Müller had tried to recruit you - you came running to me, all loyalty and alarm - but if there's one thing my years at the RSHA taught me, it's not to believe appearances. You're good, Stirlitz, but you're not as good as you think you are. It was you, wasn't it, who sent that message from the embassy?"

Stirlitz said nothing. Schellenberg was dying, but he wasn't dead. Not yet. In spite of all the efforts that had been made to isolate him - and Stirlitz knew how extensive those efforts had been - a word spoken into his ear might yet reach other ears. If the Americans found out - if there was even a hint of suspicion that Standartenführer Stirlitz had a history of cooperation with the Russians - his cover would be irretrievably compromised. The rational strategy was clear, his duty self-evident. Yet he found himself conflicted. The fact that Schellenberg was dying was hardly an irrelevant piece of trivia. In a way, it changed everything. In a few hours, nothing either of them had said here would matter anymore. The gates would clang shut forever on the past they had shared. Schellenberg knew it had been Stirlitz who betrayed him. He wasn't asking for confirmation of the fact of treachery, he wanted to know why. And from the connection he had made to the radio transmitter, he was evidently close to grasping the truth.

"I'll take that as a yes," said Schellenberg, breaking in on his thoughts. "A no would hardly have required half an hour of fiddling with that chain of yours."

Stirlitz looked up, startled, as if he had been caught rifling through a desk. His hand, he realised, was indeed closed around his key chain, its links sliding between his fingers. He hadn't even noticed he'd withdrawn it from his pocket. But Schellenberg had.

Schellenberg saw his reaction, too. "You always do that when you're thinking," he said, smugly. "At least when you think no one's watching you. I told you, Stirlitz. You're not quite as good as you think you are. Shall I tell you what really happened?"

Stirlitz took a deep breath. "Please do. I'd be interested to know myself."

Schellenberg pulled himself upright. His eyes were shining with a feverish intensity and a flush of red had crept into his cheeks. It wasn't a return to health, but a parody of health, a burst of unnatural energy from his last store of life. "Very well," he said, excitedly. "I'll tell you. And when I've finished, you can raise a glass of vodka to Müller for me. Since I won't be able to do it myself. He framed you, of course. He put your fingerprints on the suitcase so he had an excuse to pull you into his basement. He isolated the Russian pianist so she couldn't contradict him, and then he went to work. And you cracked, didn't you, Stirlitz? A few hours of Müller's special methods - God knows, he had you down there long enough, and he was panting to do Bormann a favour - and you went over to the other side. You _are_ good, Stirlitz. I'm sure the Americans are very glad they've got you, but you're not good enough. Müller outplayed you in the end. And he outplayed me. The old devil. If you run into him, in that tropical jungle of his, tell him I figured it out and I'm ready for the next round. Tell him I'm waiting for him."

He sank back against the pillows, the unnatural energy spent as suddenly as it had come. Only his eyes still held a flicker of life. They were fixed on Stirlitz's face, not with the cold scrutiny of old, but pleadingly, like a supplicant begging for a favour. How badly Schellenberg still wanted to be the spymaster, the great game player! And not, as he suspected himself of being, a non-entity, a failure, sidelined by history. Stirlitz could leave Schellenberg this one last illusion. He could let him die with a triumph of sorts, convinced that his brilliance hadn't let him down in the end. Or he could tell him the truth.

So close to death, there could be no honour in a comforting lie. This much, at least, he owed his old adversary. That in his final hours he had respected him enough to tell the truth. Even if the truth was closer to a lie than a lie itself. But that was the nature of the game.

"No," he said. "No. It wasn't like that. Those were my fingerprints on the suitcase."

Schellenberg closed his eyes. His face fell inwards, draping itself over the sharp bones of the skull, as if he had already become the corpse that would soon be lying here on the bed. The gurgle in his lungs stopped. His fingers jerked convulsively. He drew in a shallow, shuddering breath.

"Is that - the truth? Stirlitz?"

Stirlitz bowed his head. A word stirred on his tongue. As he heaved it into the silence, his throat was so tight he could not have said whether it was _Ja_ or _Da_.

It made no difference anyway. Not to Schellenberg. Not now. After a while, Stirlitz reached out and took one of the emaciated hands in his. He sat there for a long time.

After the hospital had ejected him, politely but firmly, so that they could deal with the body, Stirlitz walked to the post office. He had a telegram to send to London. An unofficial one. The British had been very helpful, all things considered. After spending years with only the thread of the Channel between them and Nazism, they were less inclined than the Americans to forgive and forget. It had not taken much to persuade them that giving the CIA access to the former head of Hitler's foreign intelligence service would be a grave mistake. Even after Schellenberg's release, when it was clear to everyone that he was dying, they had kept an eye on him. Some secrets are too dangerous to share, even with allies.

The post office lay on the other side of the river from his hotel. Halfway across the bridge, Stirlitz stopped and looked down into the water. It was the last day of March. In Berlin, the first buds would be unfurling, and the sunlight would hold its first hint of warmth. Here in Italy, though, the sun hammered down on the water and the water shone back, as bright as Bormann's gold. Stirlitz pulled out the key chain and let it run between his fingers. It was true, he was a terrible fiddler. It helped him to think. The links clicked soothingly against each other, occupying his fingers, freeing his mind.

Thus unhindered, his thoughts crossed the border into the past. He remembered Schellenberg's gleeful smile, the delight in mischief-making so all-consuming it possessed a kind of innocence. "We forgot so much during the war," Schellenberg had said. Had he really been unaware that what he had forgotten was his soul? He remembered Müller's laugh, the watchfulness that had masked a bottomless cynicism. "I see no way out of the present situation," Müller had said. But there had never been a way out. Not for Müller, and not for Schellenberg, either. What might they have been in peacetime, those two? What selves might they have nurtured away from the corrosive effects of Fascism? There would have been no Brigadeführer then, and no Gruppenführer. And no Standartenführer, either. He saw Katya's stricken face, and his bones shook with the rumble of the train pulling out, with grief for selves hung in closets and lives not lived. _How can you have a future when you have no past?_

He understood, then, why he had come. It wasn't pity for a dying man that had brought him here. It was pity for himself.

He leaned over the parapet and let the chain fall into the water. He had to screw up his eyes against the dazzle, so he didn't see the splash as it sank below the surface.


End file.
